Eerie!

Rating: 7/10 (5 February 2004)

Imagine this. You wake up in a hospital after an accident and no one is around. No people, no nurses, no one. You pull the tubes from your forearms and pay little attention to the room's door which has been barricaded. You stumble into the hospital lobby, and again, no people. You walk out onto the usual busy streets of the metropolis and there is a deafening quietness. You see cars abandoned on the road and money is flying through the air like pollen on a windy day. Again, no people. You walk into a church and see piles of bodies piled one on top of each other rotting in a disgusting stench. You see everything, but signs of life. Imagine.
28 Days Later's protagonist Jim (Cillian Murphy) finds himself in this very position after waking up from a car accident only to find that a virus spread by monkey's infected with rage' has overcome the city.
Crafted by Trainspotting director Danny Boyle on a budget of only $8 million dollars, 28 Days Later became 2003's Blair Witch Project wherein word of mouth spread quickly that this was the' scary movie to see this summer, and audiences spilled out $10 million on opening week-end on-way to an impressive $45 million haul.
The film itself is not entirely original. A virus spreads making zombie like creatures out of anyone who is contaminated with their blood, and a group of non-infected individuals fight with mighty arsenals to defeat the ravaging brood. Scary, huh.
The story follows Jim as he tries to adapt to his new environment and look for additional signs of controlled life and hope. Along the way, Jim buddies up with a female survivor and later with a father and his young daughter who are safely protected in a high rise apartment building. After hearing a broadcast over a transistor radio, the group goes out in search for others, fighting zombies and the disease at every stop.
It is when they reach the army base that the movie begins to slip a little into familiar and unfortunate genre clichés. Although heavily armed and secure in their location, the new family unit begins to fight amongst themselves and soon they are addressing their animal desires for sex and dominance. It's hard to believe that when they are all that is left in the world they would sacrifice some for the pleasure of others.

But let's give credit where it is due. Although lacking in premise originality, the film is generally entertaining due largely in part to the eeriness of the films backdrop of roads and cities completely vacant of any moving person or object. And where as most zombie films seem to have creatures crawling out of their graves, 28 Days Later gives us a realistic story as to how the disease originated and how it could spread so quickly.
I guess what ultimately makes 28 Days Later so scary is how believable the notion of a disease wiping out all of humanity could occur. Look no further than Mad Cow Disease, AIDS or SARS in the last couple of years and you wonder how close to this reality we might actually be. Scary indeed.